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Made in Abyss Wiki:Manual of Style
THIS IS A PROPOSAL, NOT A POLICY. THIS ARTICLE COULD BECOME POLICY ONCE THE CAPITALIZATION SECTION IS THOROUGLY REFERENCED This article in a nutshell: Use what the official translation is using. This is a manual of style for the English Made in Abyss wiki. It defines a set of guidelines for the use of language on article pages; the usage on other places is not required. The main philosophy of this manual can be summarized as, "use what the official translation is using," with the notable exception of some heavily established fan-translation practices, such as the words delver and narehate. However, this may change if the terms fall out of popular use. If there's a discrepancy between the official anime and manga translations, use the manga's translation. Use common sense when applying these guidelines: if there's a particularly good reason to break them, do so. For example, if you want to quote something from the manga or anime, don't replace "cave raider" with "delver." Naming Use the official translation's terms with regard to the exceptions below. Also include other translations next to the name in the lead-in of the article. If you're writing about something which has yet to get officially translated, do not rename nor change the spelling of names, and use the spelling which is used in the name of the article. But if there has since developed an unanimous support for that translation, and the spelling in the article's name is no longer used in any fan translation, it's possible to propose a name change. Exceptions * Delver (as opposed to cave raider) * Narehate (as opposed to Hollow) Capitalization Use what the official translation is using; there are no exemptions. Examples of what is capitalized * Proper nouns (like in usual English) ** Place names (Seeker Camp; Orth; Belchero Orphanage; the Great Fault; Forward Operating Base, Idofront) ** Names and titles (Reg; Riko; Ozen, the Immovable; Bondrewd, Sovereign of Dawn) ** Relic names (the Star Compass, Thousand-Men Pins, the Scale Umbrella) *** The word "relic" and adjectives describing grade are not capitalized. (the Unheard Bell, a special-grade relic) * Abyss and AbyssalUnless you somehow talk about something which isn't the Abyss in Orth, like some other random abyss. In that case, don't capitalize. * Whistle ranks ("Students get promoted to a Red Whistle after their first dive.") ** But not names of the physical whistles. * Eternal Fortune and the Flower of Fortitude * Narehate/Hollowchapter 6, page 2 Examples of what is not capitalized * Fauna and flora names (orb-piercer, corpse-weeper, baracocha fruit, neritantan) ** With the exception of Eternal Fortune and the Flower of Fortitude * Names of physical whistles ("Reg and Riko received blue whistles at the Seeker Camp.") ** But not the ranks. * Ordinal names of layers (first layer, 2nd layer) * Some other common nouns (delver) General English Use American English: * Spelling (color, center, defense, maneuver, traveled, recognize) * Punctuation and quotes (Riko said, "I, you, and our 'fluffy' Nanachi are going to go to reach the end of the Abyss," and she jumped up, cheering.) * Collective nouns number ("The guild has said that Lyza's whistle has returned.") Gender-neutral pronouns Use the singular "they" rather than other ways to express gender-neutrality, like the (s)he or she/he constructs or the generic he. Use the "themself" as the reflexive gender-neutral pronoun. Verb tense Use the literary present to describe events which directly unfold in the manga/show, and use the past tense to talk about events which happened "in the past" in-universe, i.e. things which are only known through flashbacks and such. These guidelines aren't very strict, so don't think too much about which tense is correct, but do keep in mind two golden rules: # The tense should make sense—if you are scratching your head while writing, so is the reader. # An article should be consistent with itself. Write a comment under the article to get advice if you aren't confident about the selected tense. Other matters Other matters, such as hyphenation, the punctuation of complex sentences, additional spelling variants, and typography, is not defined. If you are able to keep these things in mind, make sure that an article is consistent with itself, but it's not recommended to standardize multiple articles because there doesn't exist one standard on the wiki. Footnotes References